http://www.philly.com/mld...374.htm?1c

Black in the box

Eager to keep cranking out pop hits, a nervous music industry is freezing out the adventurous funk fringe.

By Tom Moon

Inquirer Music Critic


In this spring's media swirl surrounding the "comeback" of Prince, there were effusive stories celebrating his unique approach to audio naughtiness, rhapsodic accounts of his skills as an entertainer, memory-lane trips through his groundbreaking funk-rock of the early '80s.

The loving glance backward was overdue. But at the same time, it was a little sad because it raised a thorny question: Where are Prince's progeny?

In contemporary popular music, who besides Outkast is galvanizing audiences from that slightly threatening outsider zone once known as the black fringe? Who's waving the freak flag, keeping P-Funk audacity alive, challenging the mainstream with Fishbone-esque stylistic smashups?

"You would think, in the age of Outkast, that there would be a lot of crazy types of innovation going on," says guitarist Vernon Reid, founder of the '80s black alternative-rock band Living Colour.

Instead, there's a huge vacancy in left field. Declining revenue, allegedly due to file-sharing, has record execs more risk-averse than ever, particularly where a cash cow like urban music is concerned.

The demand for hits is as old as the Victrola. But increasingly, that pressure has caused African American artists aligned with any sort of fringe - musical, social, whatever - to be marginalized by the big labels.

"There's a vicious amount of anti-intellectualism in our recorded arts," Reid argues. "Black music was the music everybody came to for emotional truth. That's what soul was.

"Now, it's so constructed and artificial. We have singers who, to show their feelings, have to holler all the time... . The track might be hot, but there's no emotional investment going on underneath it."

This isn't a small problem. As urban music has assumed a place of commercial preeminence, its artistic horizons have been steadily narrowed by a wicked cocktail of assembly-line production aesthetics, fearful executives, and audiences that demand gratification within a song's first 30 seconds.

The black rock franchise is owned by Lenny Kravitz, virtually its only practitioner. Guitarist and songwriter Ben Harper, the nonclassifiable artist most successfully amassing a fringe crowd, sells records, but not in Missy Elliott numbers.

Musicians who may need years to refine their sound, or whose ideas are already ahead of prevailing trends, don't have much chance. Within the business, even Outkast is seen not as a shining triumph of creativity, but as a high-achieving fluke: The folks who make pop records can find you 10 Reuben Studdards, but they won't dare bring you the next Shuggie Otis.

Off-duty, some of the same suits desire music that's a touch more radical. But when it comes to selling, they recognize that it's folly to search for another Meshell Ndegeocello, the African American singer and bassist who has lambasted an industry she believes caters to the lowest common denominator.

"They make rap records about violence, which I don't consider to be among the most progressive ideas in America," Ndegeocello told Horizon magazine a few years ago. "It's all about making money, and then if you critique it, you're seen as a playa-hater. What about educating people of color and giving other alternatives?"

"You have to remember, this is a business," counters Big Jon Platt, a senior talent executive at Virgin Records and EMI Music Publishing. There's not an executive "who doesn't want to find something unique, but things aren't set up the way they were in 1980: These labels are owned by corporations, and they need results."

Platt, who was involved with introducing talented rapper-producer Kanye West, believes that hip-hop is alternative _expression. But many in the genre say the industry maintains a double standard: White alternative rock bands aren't signed with the mandate that they become instant chart-toppers. In hip-hop, even the trippiest thinker is expected to connect with the MTV/BET audience.

The Roots have encountered this doublethink on their last three projects. Though the Philadelphia collective is a true band - an anomaly in hip-hop - and its music bears the influence of James Brown and Ornette Coleman, its alternative leanings don't matter much in the boardroom. Despite street cred as one of the most forward-thinking collectives in black music, it is pushed to follow a blueprint that's more Nelly than Hendrix - that is, play the accessibility game, generate singles and videos.

"The labels know that 75 percent of the buyers of black music are white," says Richard Nichols, the Roots' manager. "Most of those people have a very specific use for black music: It's about the beat, it's for dancing, whatever. They're not going to it looking for complexity or art. I'd argue that minstrelsy reigns supreme right now."

For much of pop music's history, black artists have been not just kings of the dance floor, but art-minded trailblazers. Reid recalls Atlantic Records in the late 1960s, where the roster included jazz visionary Rahsaan Roland Kirk as well as Led Zeppelin.

"It was the will of that corporation to subsidize adventures," Reid says. "And they did it because they believed that those could lead to greater hits, different ideas getting through."

Jazz pianist Jason Moran agrees, and detects an insidious trickle-down effect of the stardom-or-bust mind-set: With so few examples of black art made free of unreasonable commercial expectations, he says, the oppositional independence that distinguished work by Miles Davis and Public Enemy could disappear.

"You have to remember, as African Americans we've been told what to do for most of history," Moran says. "One of the lessons I've learned from people like [jazz artists] Greg Osby and Andrew Hill is [that] nobody can tell me what to do as an artist. That's a hard thing for a kid to learn."

Reid believes that Living Colour - which had several singles, including "Cult of Personality," and successful albums in the late '80s - was lucky: It heeded its instincts and still managed to wrangle some success.

"Things just sort of lined up," Reid recalls of Living Colour's run from 1984 to 1995. "What we were doing, what Public Enemy was doing, it was bubbling below the radar. Then when it popped out, it happened despite the industry."

The same thing can happen today, but it doesn't happen often. Alternative hip-hop artists, such as the sharply observant female rapper Jean Grae, have trouble developing a coalition without the promotional muscle of a major label. Ditto for song-poets, like Carl Hancock Rux, whose work expresses a political or social perspective. African American tunesmiths who write straightforward pop, among them the Brian Wilson-influenced Stew, of the band Negro Problem, encounter marketplace indifference.

Even R&B artists who proffer a slightly different attitude - like Atlanta's Van Hunt, the rock-influenced singer and songwriter who will perform at 9 p.m. tomorrow at NXNW in Mount Airy - face uphill climbs, because after so many lean years, there's no clear black-alternative constituency for labels to aim at.

"My music is never black enough for black people or white enough for white people," Hunt mused recently. "The way I see it, the problem is one of conviction:... Nobody wants to give artists time to develop. Think about it: We would never have gotten to Stand! if Sly [Stone] didn't have somebody in his corner believing. That was his fifth album; 1999 was Prince's fifth album," he said. "Cats don't get five chances today."

Hunt and others say that despite what most see as a dire situation, a black-alternative could thrive again. All it takes is the right tune, says Virgin's Platt: "You could have the weirdest act, and if there's a hit song attached, it'll find an audience."

Hunt agrees: "It comes down to the craft of songwriting... . Whether I'm considered rock or R&B or whatever, that's going to be a problem until I sell a million records. Then it'll all make sense."

Think about it: We would never have gotten to Stand! if Sly [Stone] didn't have somebody in his corner believing. That was his fifth album; 1999 was Prince's fifth album," he said. "Cats don't get five chances today."



Good article! Thanks.

Great article.

I hope all this crap bottoms out and comes full cirlce creating one of the best periods in popular music.

Frankly, I'm getting a bit pssied off. Theseartists moan and gripe and bitch about the injustice of it all but whats the cause? Capitalism of course. Its the system that dictates the need for economic returns. These pop singers et al are happy to take and enjoy all the priviligies and luxuries of capitalism, to use its laws for their own ends etc. But went it ain't working for them they want to moan. It ain't about evil white folks keeping black folks down, shit black liberation and equal rights ain't even about equality. Those right wing fascists got you all playing their own game, they suckered you in. All you folks want, black, white any race any land is as much as you can get for yourself, control of the resources and contol of any competiion.

Wakey wakey.

Snap said:

Yeah, good point.

Depressing, eh?

gr8 response Comon, at last some common sense - luv ur post - totally agree...

COMON said:

right. cause it's all about the man on top not giving a damn about nothing else but staying there. That's what I wish we could change the most.

adorable2 said:

It would b nice if those on the bottom were given more options to deal with injustice. A poor man is told to pray and forgive any wrongdoing, a rich man hires a lawyer, goes to court and wins a reward.

And it really pisses me off the way these people crave your sympathy, "oh look at how unjustly I'M being treated"- the reality is that these people are practising the most basic instinct knwon to all living things- self defence and self interest.

Alot of these people (though not all) that campiagn under these banners of 'Womens Rights' 'Black Rights' just using what they can to get as much as they can for themselves- its whatever suits their interests at the given time'. Why aren't they campaigning for freedom and equality for all? Its always for their mf self. How many black interest groups in America, so proud of their heritage are sending money to Africa? Some maybe, lots are spending it on big house and lawyers to keep people off their property you know what I'm saying? Prince in Dear Mr Man says he feels like he's still sitting in the back of the bus? Ma heart bleeds.

Anyone know someone who use to preach free love and sleeping around when they were young, got a bit older and now prescribes fidelity? Anyone know some who used to sing about not caring what anyone wears clothes wise, it just about being there and having a good time? And then years later makes a music video in which people don't get let into the venue because the clothes they are wearing don't fit in with the rest of 'em? (Musicology)

Who's fooling who? No one get's a second chance. Lie to yourself and dance! Illusion Coma Pimp and Circumstance.

COMON said:

lol....

COMON, are you still beating off to that picture of Hitler in a singlet?

"Who's waving the freak flag, keeping P-Funk audacity alive, challenging the mainstream with Fishbone-esque stylistic smashups?"

Ummmm....there will never be another Fishbone-esque musician, there will never be another Prince-esque musician.....both are true ORIGINAL musical sounds and there are many other artists with their own original sound out there that we CAN IN DEED find.

The problem here isn't with the musicians finding a "hit" or even the record companies trying to do the same. The problem is with the listeners! The "mainstream" SUCKS and music listeners need to stray away from it. I can't stand most new music today because each musician or group is a carbon copy of what's come before.

Wake up music listeners.....in the 80's "alternative music" became popular. It's time for that to happen again!

ThunderCer

COMON said:

THIS THREAD WAS HIGHJACKED!.....

I see your point, but! There are other significant issues here.....

Excluding race all together:
1.) Why is the creative spectrum being narrowed more and more in ALL styles?
2.) Is the industry dumbing down America's musical mentality or vice versa?
3.) Investor's will always want imediate investment returns, thats not going to change.
How can we change what they invest in?

A Independant Revolution is the only answer!
1.) A large number of eclectic artist have to start selling their own music.
2.) The craft of songwritting IS the key. It has to be unique and sound good!!!
3.) If several artist/indendant labels get their sells up, majors will automatically follow the trends.
4.) Trends started by great unique artist only create a vaster spectrum of music.
5.) Once the "left wing" market has been fattened up and is on the radar, labels will open their doors to more creative, trailblazing artist.
6.) Buy and Support the music you love. Download all the industry processed crap for free!

Lets please focus on the main issues here!

http://www.Broadjam.com/cozmic

COMON said:

That part of the video always bugged me. I was trying to justify the bouncer's actions to myself by thinking there must be a backstory to the characters, showing that they were violent and were going to the club to fight. Now I think that the bouncers were simply being pricks. It's a pretty sad thing to see people turned away, just because of how they look or dress. Not everyone can even afford retro-stylish suits, hats, ties, etc....

Luv & Peace,
Alex
Clubbin' in Mpls/A Night w. Prince

sloopydrew4u said:

1st of all the industry is greedy but also Racist! Color plays a part in all facets of life especially if u're Black period,Rich or Poor.But that's a 5day conversation. As far as the video where the Bouncer did'nt let the hiphop dressed guys in is done all the time at Black clubs. It's called...dress code! The same club will have a hiphop night and that dress is allowed but on the weekends mostly it's 25&over no jimmmy's or jeans or t-shirts....it;s dress 2 impress. So that's what was bein portrayed in the video. Look at how the band is dressed. Upscale and classy. Grownup music 4 Grown Folks!
[This message was edited Thu Jul 15 16:47:44 2004 by ELBOOGY]

Thing is, the Artists CAN have control but in doing so they might not get as much CASH as the big corporations can push their way. That's their beef. They just want it all without sacrifice or compromise.

It ain't anybodies fault but ourselves-concerning the music industry. What you buy is what you get, vote with your feet, vote with where and on what you spend your money.

Maybe the future is gonna be less full of big 'Stars' on big 'bucks' and full of more REAL muscians playing for the love and the joy to smaller audiences. Lets see how the 'Stars' ego's and material desries adjust to that- mfs.

COMON said:

good points.

The main reason 4 no music,kids are walking around with mic's in hand instead of instruments.i'm an educator and they are trying to cut music out of schools.All kids see on most tv's, Rap not music i'm also a piano player and to me weather you become comercially sucessful or not there is nothing more beautiful than making music creating a sound.the 1st thing the must happen is for our generation to let the kids know how beautiful and funky playing an instrument can be. I really miss music earth wind and fire.Average white band
cats that made songs, now all we get is a beat and some noise how sad.not only that the rappers aint talking about shit.with all this going on in the world topic still booty.shit sad

joelmarable said:

I 2nd that emotion!

sloopydrew4u said:

Agreed, but brothers who dress like that pay a lot of cash to look like that. 100.00 jeans, 30.00 caps, 200.00 throwbacks and 100.00 kicks . . . that can get you a suit at Bachrach.

Believe me, if wearing suits ever comes back in style, brothers will wear them regardless of the cost.